ACRL Tips and Trends, Winter

Tips and Trends Instructional Technologies Committee

ALTMETRICS AND The following is a sample of platforms that have added altmetrics scores to article and chapter-level INFORMATION content: BioMed Central, EBSCOhost, Elsevier, Frontiers Media, the JAMA Network, Karger, LITERACY Michigan Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, WINTER 2019 Public Library of Science (PLoS), Scopus, Summon (ProQuest), Taylor & Francis, EBSCO Discovery BY KELLY MARIE BLANCHAT Service, Weave: Journal of Library User Experience,

and Wiley. Many of these platforms have integrated Overview and Definition Altmetric from Digital Science. Another altmetrics Traditionally, librarians and researchers have service used is PlumX Metrics from Plum Analytics, used citation metrics to measure scholarly originally an EBSCO company and recently acquired impact using services such as Journal Citation by Elsevier; both providers integrate PlumX Metrics Reports (Thomson Reuters) and SCImago onto their platforms. PLoS uses its own service Journal & Country Rank (Scopus), or by called PLoS ALMs (Article Level Metrics). The calculating a citation analysis or an author’s h- altmetrics badges from these three providers are index (Galloway 2013). Though these metrics distinct: Altmetric has a multi-color donut (Image are useful for collection development, tenure 1), PlumX Metrics has a multi-color node (Image and promotion, and scholarly communication, 2), and PLoS ALMs has a grid of 4 monochrome they are often too specific for student boxes (Image 3). Their platform integrations are engagement. Altmetrics—or “alternative not unlike a Web of Science and Scopus metrics. metrics”—measure user engagement with scholarly works at the article level in real time using counts outside of traditional scholarship. These counts range from downloads and views, social media engagement, and references in news and blogs to shared citation manager lists. Though neither traditional metrics nor altmetrics provide a complete picture on their own, altmetrics allow for a broader picture of engagement that is more accessible and relatable for students.

Why Do You Need to Know? Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 As more content platforms embed altmetrics scores into article and chapter level content—right As instruction librarians work with users on content alongside PDF download and citation export retrieval and analysis, it is important to have a options—students of all levels have more grasp of what altmetrics do, from how they appear opportunities to engage with altmetrics on their to how to retrieve them and interpret the results. own. This situation has the potential to change The colorful and seemingly “friendly” appearance of when students are introduced to scholarly metrics, altmetrics scores—compared to the very cut-and- from h-indexes to journal rankings, which are dry display of Web of Science and Scopus metrics— usually not introduced until late in undergraduate means that not only are users being presented with course work or in graduate school. altmetrics upfront, but that they may be more willing to engage with them.

Tips and Trends, written by Instructional Technologies Committee members, introduces and discusses new, emerging, or even familiar technology which can be applied in the library instruction setting. Issues are published 4 times a year.

Tips and Trends ● Winter 2019

Current Applications in Academic phrases that they would associate with the resource based only on the article title. Libraries and Higher Education An internet and scholarly literature search on Next, direct students to look at the article title and altmetrics will bring back an abundance of the altmetrics data. After about 5 minutes of information about how librarians can use and altmetrics exploration, have students reflect either understand altmetrics, but most of the literature individually or in pairs on the impact of the focuses on applications for collection development following factors on their perception of the and scholarly communication. Still, it is important resource: for librarians involved in instruction & technology to • Global engagement: What parts of the understand altmetrics and be prepared to teach to world are and are not engaging with the them or to explain the scores (see “Further resource online? What limitations are there to Readings”). recording only social and online engagement? • Social media: Who is sharing the resource? Incorporating altmetrics into a library lesson plan Is the share positive, negative, or neutral? can leverage any number of knowledge practices • News and blogs: Are the news publications and dispositions from the ACRL Framework. For credible sources? Do they have a political instance, altmetrics record user engagement at the slant? When were they written? article level in real time, pulling metrics of user • No data: What does the lack of any of these engagement with scholarship from sources such as data points tell you about the resource? social media, which can be broken down into the following ACRL Framework segments: After five to eight minutes of student reflection, • Engagement with multiple resource types bring the class back together to talk in a group (scholarly literature, grey literature, datasets, about their findings. Ask students which data points news and blogs, etc.) as “Information had the biggest impact on their understanding of Creation as a Process” the resource. • Real-time engagement with social media as “Scholarship as Conversation” • Cross-disciplinary engagement as “Authority is Potential Hurdles Constructed and Contextual” One of the biggest pitfalls of altmetrics is that social media engagement can be bought and sold, Using altmetrics in information literacy instruction thereby potentially inflating recorded engagement. can also provide an opportunity to scaffold larger Current events in the U.S. should make this point concepts that are likely to arise later in a student’s easy for students to understand. However, since career, such as selecting quality content from a the ACRL framework emphasizes critical result list, identifying high-profile scholars and engagement, this pitfall can be leveraged with the publications, verifying accuracy of research claims, Framework segment “Information Has Value.” and understanding the impact of cited works, to name a few. For librarians interested in engaging with altmetrics, one potential hurdle is that institutions One way to engage with altmetrics in a library can choose to suppress altmetrics in a discovery instruction setting is to gather a list of articles and layer. In such situations, altmetrics will only be book chapters available online from your library. available at individual content platforms, and the This can be done as a small bibliography or, if your consistency of providers and display for these library has a discovery service that has enabled services can differ widely. altmetrics, as a prepared search in a discovery layer. For either option, make sure that the resources in the list have an altmetric score. Conclusion

To start the lesson, have students pick one article It can be discouraging for instruction librarians or book chapter from the list that interests them. searching for literature on metrics, particularly Ask students to write down a few words and altmetrics, due to the heavy focus on collection development, scholarly communications, and Tips and Trends ● Winter 2019

STEM. With the growing popularity of altmetrics, it is important for librarians working in instruction to “PlumX Metrics.” 2018. Plum Analytics. become acquainted with this technology.

The brief lesson plan described here is just one way to engage early-career students with altmetrics, which they will undoubtedly encounter in their own explorations for online research. Another way to start thinking about using altmetrics as a non-STEM or collection development librarian is to leverage the literature in those fields, and simply scale the lesson objectives and outcomes to your audience.

As an instruction librarian myself, I hope to see more engagement and experimentation with these tools by my colleagues in the future.

Tools Discussed (if appropriate) • Altmetric.com (altmetrics aggregator from Digital Science) • PLoS ALMs (altmetrics aggregator from Public Library of Science) • PlumX Metrics (altmetrics aggregator from Plum Analytics)

References Galloway, Linda M., Janet L. Pease, and Anne E. Rauh. 2013. "Introduction to Altmetrics for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Librarians." Science & Technology Libraries 32 (4): 1-11.